Fuck it

I'm not sure what's gone wrong. It's not just the wine fogging my mental faculties.

The talk tonight was big. Broke us in to a million stupid pieces. We sit in separate rooms. My hair is wet, lips stained with wine.

And tomorrow is Monday. I'll pretend everything is fine while I figure out what is next.

What happens when your future plan goes uncertain? You come too close to the mirage, see the asphalt burning for what it is.

I don't know I don't know. I keep telling him I don't know. Infuriating as that is. Through the open front door I see nothing but oily black and indigos. Faint shadows of the street.

Useless as my heart and brain right now. I do not enjoy helplessness. One path or another, there's direction in me somewhere. It is a necessity.

I used to write good shit when buzzed or drunk or in pain. Tonight it just blows.

Rambling and La Mesa Nights Nostalgia

There's more sunlight here than there was yesterday I found myself tapping away.

I've filled my first weekend back with running. To or from, I can't be sure. There is a shift inside and I am ill equipped with an experience comparison to project outcomes or trajectories.

Back on the river with no paddle.

I've let the right-brain impulses breathe a bit of freedom. Cautiously optimistic they may be on to something and that I should not lock them up so tight as I did. I try not to judge myself so harshly but old habits die hard. I only wanted to promote stability in my life and succeeded. Now I've got to remedy the byproduct staleness so I can grow.

Stale. Life and risk and soft exposed parts.I watch a worry fly by. Remain objective. Chance. Remain objective. Feel and let it pass.

A plastic bag drags itself across the ground grit outside. The scraping is rough in my ears between my teeth. Raw on my insides and heart. Remain objective. Let it happen, ease in to it. Don't resist.

I won't lie. I'm scared. The panic, sadness, guilt. The love. Anger. All of it engulfs me at the throat and makes my whole face hurt. The pain travels in to my forearms, my palms, buzzing at fingertips. My hands find their way between tapping to massage and encourage resistance to drop.

When I was 19, Micheal and I used to chainsmoke Misty Menthol 120s, drink vodka, and improv poetry into the uncaring night air. Occasionally, I'd be sober enough to get a notepad and pen so we could record some of it. Most of it was great. Some of it was shit. We loved it all.

We spent hours on his La Mesa patio, philosophizing, bullshitting, crying, laughing about our silly social circle dramas and lamenting about the world, fantasizing about socialism and a world that loved. We were two peas in a pod. Brother and sister from another mister. I miss that guy, those times. We are different people but I always look back fondly.

We never skipped our ritual. Not even for the California fires of 2003.

Different people. That was at least 2 mini lifetimes ago. Maybe 3 of this one is dying. We die many times during our lifetimes, the way I see it. I'm not sure this one is going to be easy.

Stream of Consciousness

What words belong? The blankness begs, a question nothing but loose change in a pocket. Obnoxious. Who uses anything but plastic rectangles and magstripes nowadays to pay their way?

Pay my way. 

How to pay back the neglect? 

Free it up. Don't dwell too long on a branch. It could snap and it's a long way down. I've left it in the nest too long, half-hatched. Wake up, muse. Flutter on, stretch your glorious limbs, lick your lips, and exhale.

I sit on this sofa. Shit from Jerome's, part of a living room set. An eager purchase to fill this blank room, 2 years ago. It caves strategically, whereever we plant our asses most. Warm amber glow from the included lamps.

I'm nestled in one of the sofa cave-ins, bare legs still soft from recent shave, bent knees-first into the arm supporting this dinosaur of a laptop, recently salvaged from failure city. I've said my "fuck you" to jeans, a careless crumple of denim litter on the floor. But I stopped there. Too lazy I guess to fuck off with the rest. 

This position would not have done too well 100 pounds ago. Now, I enjoy few things more than curling up whenever I can.

My phone rings alarm against the back of my thigh. So that's where it went. Time to take antibiotic.

I will shave again tonight, whatever the razor catches. Vanity doesn't drive the nightly ritual; sleep does. I don't sleep quite right if everything isn't smoothed down. 

Here I sit. In my nothing writing. Tapping away on a keyboard missing its "a" key. But maybe the insignificant trips up meaning later. Maybe tonight. Maybe next Friday. Maybe 3 weeks from today. I just remember, when I did this before. It came. Eventually.

Bjork.  I've got her competing with the tower fan right now. My can she be pretentious sometime. I don't care. I've got her Bastards album in consuming through the queue, misfit pieces that did not belong with the rest. 

But, her misfits are among my favorites in what I know of her work. It feels appropriate enough to break out in full span grin.

Suddenly, a conversation with my boss comes to mind. "No one is so special or unique. Everyone feels and thinks the dark things you do, you know." I could agree, almost fullheartedly. I'm not one for absolutes.

One, I wouldn't say "everyone" but "lots of folks." 

Two, I would say, "no one is so special or unique in their thoughts or emotions because we are all human."

Three, I would add about the dark things: "and each responds or interacts with those things differently, sometimes similarly, but ultimately unique to the sum of that individual's composition as driven by genetics, experiences, and current beliefs based on those experiences."

Some people are uncomfortable with the differences. So much, they fight wars, kill each other, oppress others. Justification is easier than confronting the discomfort that sits with us all.

Old Poetries

 

Old poetries....
Probing through my chest like sea anemones.
Love.
It's in pain, butterfly.
Just a friend, just ancient presenttimes,
arching across my mind.

Writing these letters like scattering ants carrying broken thoughts on fragmented backs. A lost organization, lost civilization, a feigned neatness. My eyes burn and my heart is meat sitting precariously close to a grinder.

I'd like to jump into the ocean. Lay with my head resting in her palm, legs dangling off her fingertips, fetal drift, nearer to the lung to go with the flow like I'm supposed to.

Flutter in abandoned hot and wet and throbbing and pulsing and sighing and shaking, collapsing and breaking so everything is alive again.

Then you cocoon me with your shushes and your whispers like mother's hands and give me lotus lilies to stand on. Sleep, tired baby, you say, you've been stressing much too long and worry pointless worries.

Wanderlust and Music Therapy

“I hand myself over to the music,” he wrote. 

You might use this trick often, if you were born with a hairtrigger scale. Music - like any art - can be as superficial or deep as you make it. I make it medicine. It’s the drug that helps turn spine to steel when dealing with life’s heaviness. Useful alchemy when all your fine-tuning efforts don’t seem effective enough alone. 

Maybe this emotional thing is a defect. Maybe it’s a blessing. Like most things, it depends on what you make it.

“I hand myself over to the music.”

The words cut a string invisible to the naked eye. There was a little shock, I shuddered, and a piece of self awareness broke the surface. I hung it out to dry in the sunlight and chewed the side of my thumb cuticle like my brain chews thoughts.

I run far more from the heavy than I’d care to admit.

I drive long distances to nowhere in particular. I grab a random to-do from mid-air and throw some clothes on, hurry out the door.

All for the unconscious therapy teasing me in the form of my car’s speakers blasting what I need into my ears - be it razors, ocean, bullets, ice, silk, canyons, sticks to break bones and remend in a fiery resurrection of some kind. Meanwhile, I get the Windex I think I need or browse the bookstore to thrust myself into a crowd of others looking to lose themselves in other people’s words.

Now that I’m a bit more aware of my behavior, the medicine seems to work better. I feel closer to whole, closer to solid and not quite so mercurial. There is nothing right or wrong, better or worse with your head in the clouds but a lifeline to the ground seems a healthy option for me.

It IS about control. Life seems unwieldy but if you’ve got some of your shit together, then you’ve got what you need to navigate with some dexterity. Sometimes the music helps carry the weight so that I can devote myself far more to living and less about worry, shame, fear, self-destruction.

Not the perfect solution but sure a lot closer to functionality than without.

Basketball

Right now, life is watching a basketball circling the rim. If breath had fingernails, it'd be gripping your thigh.

Dunk? No dunk?

Only time knows. I'm following it. Waiting to see. Are we really that temporary? Do I need to let go?Everything is temporary, even illusory.

But I'm talking about us. We. I can tell myself that forever is relative to my finite lifespan. It doesn't change the drumming beating my insides. To deny it would be a lie. I tried that once.

Yeah. Fuck that.

I acknowledge the truth, or the beginning of what I can see of it. In one dimension I scream and claw away all of my skin. In another I'm laughing and dancing.

It hurts. Always like fire. But I have few alternatives, because burning the other way is unacceptable.

I am small without all the weight. My hands find the ribs poking close to softness on the outside. Too soft. And all the hollows between. I don't know this person. I don't know what she is or if I even like her.

"You know, I never wanted to have children. Your father tricked me. I wanted to enjoy my life."
"Get the fuck out of here."
"Get out of the way."
"Leave me alone."
"You are draining me, Chance."
"I don't want you near me."
"Don't TOUCH me!"
"I should never have had kids."
"Go get it yourself."
"Ugh. Let me do it. MOVE."
"Whatever."
"Get off of me. Just go. Go to your room."
"You are stressing me out."
"Goddammit, why? Why are you here right now?!"

I ate myself sick often as a child. Beyond childhood. Between trying to be quiet and sense her moods, I developed a passive self hatred and empathy large enough to swallow an elephant. Survival techniques to better sense her moods and navigate around them however I could.

She didn't mean to hurt or ruin me. It was her pain. Her own journey of emotional neglect and abuse that hurt so badly, it bled in to mine. Heavy inheritance to work through. I try to give myself the love and acceptance she simply could not. It feels wrong every time - like loving yourself is a selfish thing and selfishness is a dirty word. Self absorption. ICK.

But I've grown from depressive anxious to regulating these these moods on my own far better than I ever thought I could. Even played with anger which has been very useful, strangely. Mothering myself has been a exercise.

A couple of months ago, someone told me "Chance, you are not broken; your self perception is. Fix THAT. You don't need to be fixed." It has helped immensely.

But, I circle back 'round the rim now.

Because that - along with 6 months of focus - has also spun up this curiosity and awareness of all life areas. It's why I'm tormented now. Taking a hard at what I thought and felt were stable places. Unchanging anchorage.

Now I am adrift. Scared in the river again. No paddle and a branch threatening to make this a whole lot more REAL.

What about US? We are open about our situation. I can't seem to stop crying.

Fear

Feeling like it's much later than it is. 

A rhythm out of sync.

But this feeling is something with roots, beyond jet lag. It's been building, confusing me, whispering, growing agitated.

It doesn't speak my primary language but I understand. It's begging to crack through the surface into the light.

It unnerves me. I'm not sure if it's a monstrosity I should kill on sight or if it's an unknown, yearning to BE known, something I should observe and decide to nurture. It's too soon to know much of anything.

All I know is, it's part of me. 

~

A friend of ours told me last week that I write well. His word choice was more eloquent than that but suffice to say, it meant a lot coming from him. I consider him one of the most brilliant, talented human beings I've had the pleasure to know in my life - an amazing writer whether song, prose, or joke. 

Despite his own uprooted life journey in recent times, his ability to ground those that flail to get their feet back to Earth does not seem compromised while he picks up the pieces from the shipwreck he's (mostly) survived. 

My main ship still sails, but I have this impending sense of doom. It flutters its wings against my ribcage, pecking holes in all my bones. Sometimes its screaming echoes up my esophagus, threatens to escape through my own mouth. But ultimately, it circles past the larynx, into my skull, muffling my prefontal faculties in a cocoon. 

One day, the bird will make its way through and take over my body. Until it does, it will burn in me, dying and regenerating, until it has its day in the open air, feral, free, fighting or flying.

I worry about what this means. I bite my fingertips to keep the fear from seeping too far into reality, safely tucked inside where all it does is burn and feed and destroy. I figure better in me than outside to destroy what's been created. 

Dali's Persistence of Memory implants firmly within my amgydala.

There's another voice in there too. Calm. "What if the end you fear is the beginning you need?"

I hate that voice sometimes. The Pioneer. That son of a bitch.

But I'll write about it anyway. Maybe it will help me figure out how to get through whatever it is I'm going through.